As they might have texted to each other in Berchtesgaden, had they the technology: AMG - ach mein gott! Tom Cruise plays Claus von Stauffenberg, the decent Wehrmacht officer, maimed in the North African campaign, who plotted to kill Hitler. The prospect of Tom von Cruise, with his spiffy uniform, unfeasibly big peaked cap and eyepatch, had most of cringing in our seats with special cushions we'd brought into the auditorium to put over our faces at the dramatic moments. There is one gruesome scene in which, to express his contempt for the Führer, Cruise gives the Nazi salute - with his amputated stump! Yikes.

Director Bryan Singer has put together a fairly workable, old-fashioned second world war movie, but the convention of Brit thesps playing Germans has now become ridiculous. In among all these British character players, Tom looks like Steve McQueen with the limeys in The Great Escape. Every single British character actor in Spotlight has apparently got the call: Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard, Kevin McNally, Tom Hollander, David Bamber (as Hitler); the list goes on and on. (Singer probably also inquired after the availability of James Robertson Justice and Richard Wattis.) By my watch, it was fully 45 minutes before a bona fide German actor had any lines: Christian Berkel, playing the explosives expert Colonel Mertz.

It's not badly done, but Cruise's American accent is jarring and his jaw-muscle-clenching intensity is really only effective when he's playing the bad guy. Stauffenberg isn't really the part he should have played. You know what I'm talking about. Cruise should be playing ... well, let's wait 10 years or so. Let Tom grow into the role - the role he was born for!